Reply to 12/13 year old girls arrested for stomping man to death in DC last fall

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Reply to "12/13 year old girls arrested for stomping man to death in DC last fall"

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[quote=Anonymous]I'm the PP who said this case was a failure of community and schools as well as parents. I wanted to clarify that since people took issue with it.

To be clear, I don't blame teachers or neighbors for not somehow stopping this from happening. I'm talking about systemic failure that enable kids like this to escalate their violent and anti-social behavior over time without consequences.

Yes parents are to blame and have a responsiblity for addressing this behavior as it arises. But DC has lots of people who have kids as teens, who have their own bad childhoods as an example, who are violent with their kids or abuse drugs or are totally absent. We could punish those parents and I wouldn't disagree with that but I don't think it will solve the issue because these parents are not just negligent -- they are incapable. They won't "step up" because they might get in trouble otherwise. These are people who already engage in a bunch of behaviors that could get them in trouble with the law.

In terms of what schools and communities could do: DC needs real consequences for truancy and real enforcement. We need more people whose whole job it is to get kids who are supposed to be in school to be in school. And yes parents should be the focus in early grades but by MS kids should be held accountable themselves. There should not be so many truant children running around this city period, but especially not committing crimes. We need a way to catch these kids and deliver them to schools or detain them for chronic truancy.

We also need more police officers and community safety officers in neighborhoods where truancy is particularly problematics (as well as on metro and in places like Chinatown and Columbia Heights where truant teens tend to congregate).

That's what I mean by school and community involvement. Formal systems for catching and detaining kids who aren't where they are supposed to be. I wasn't talking about teachers somehow failing to de-criminalize these teens.[/quote]

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